Weekly Mobile Insights- 10: Internet of Things and latest news

November 14th, 2014

Weekly Mobile Insights- 10: Internet of Things and latest news

This week there’s been a lot of news about the Internet of Things thanks to Gartner’s latest report and other recent events. Here’s a quick recap of this and other related news.

Gartner predicts a 30% surge for the Internet of ThingsWe’ve been skeptical about some of the past statements on the Internet of Things but this report is showing some real and relevant data on the number of devices per category. This includes automotive, consumer (home speakers, radios, security, IP phones, appliances, etc.) and business (including utilities, government, etc.). Gartner also points out that this will be a big challenge for enterprise and government as they lack the required design, development and security skills to make the services easy to use and secure.

Our take: We agree with Gartner. To start with IoT has been more technology driven than user driven but as the technology is maturing this is now rapidly changing.

What is the Internet of Things?
Gartner’s report states that most devices today are actually home consumer devices. Charles Huang, COO of home security company Leeo provides his view on how IoT is about identifying clear personal use cases of how we can help people in the home, while traveling and at work leveraging technology. IoT gets personal!

Our take: The success of IoT for smart cities might be about invisible technology that helps improve efficiency but mass market success will be services and devices that touch our daily lives. These services will be based on use cases that solve problems and needs.

iOS accounted for 69% of all enterprise device activations in Q3
Last year we saw strong growth for Samsung and Microsoft in the enterprise space but Apple is keeping their number 1 position with a very wide margin in the US at least. For tablets Apple has a market share of 89%, which is pretty incredible.

Our take: Enterprise device decisions need to be based on total cost of ownership and employee satisfaction and at the moment Apple is winning in this game. Google, Samsung, Lenovo, Microsoft and others have a lot of work to do to convince enterprises to select their platforms.

Smartphone commerce revenue grew by 141% in 2013
Smartphones and tablets accounted for 43% of all site visits in Q3 2014, according to MarketLive’s “Q3 2014 Performance Index.” The most incredible thing however is that smartphone originated mCommerce revenue grew by 141%, which is beyond any forecast.

Our take: Earlier this year we reported on mCommerce revenue being far behind vs. traffic from mobile and that traffic and revenue should be equal to other channels if the user experience is good enough. Brands are now starting to catch up by investing in better user experience.